Technical advances in compositing image processing systems have facilitated and generalized the use of highly-saturated studio environments in which to film talents performing a scene, which should subsequently be composited in an alternative background. “Blue screen” techniques in video environments and “green-screen” techniques in cinematographic environments are well known, wherein talents, presenters or models are filmed in a studio configured with respectively blue- or green-saturated surroundings, in order to generate a clip of foreground image frames. An alternative clip of background image frames is subsequently generated and a compositing process allows an image editor to seamlessly blend the foreground and background image frames by means of keying parts of the corresponding video signals, for instance the luminance or chrominance signal, which is known to those skilled in the art as “chroma-keying”. Such image data processing has long been provided by means of dedicated hardware, for instance, the Ultimatte system provided by the Ultimatte Corporation which also provides a competitive “matte” format to accomplish the same task.
The present invention provides interactive touch system control commands and drawing images to the image compositing system using matte/chroma-key compatible blue- or green-saturated surroundings. Prior art employs a touch panel overlay upon a large screen video monitor both of which become part of the foreground image that is composited into the background image. The foreground video camera thus captures the images of a person making the presentation, the image displayed on the display monitor, and the visible portion of the touch panel. Since the touch panel overlays a display monitor, calibration of the touch panel and the image once established is maintained by the physical relationship between the touch panel and the display monitor. The present invention does not require a display monitor, rather the touch system is calibrated to the fiducial image of the active area of the touch system as perceived in the matte/chroma-key image compositor display monitor. Thus, interactivity of the talent or presenter making the presentation is not limited by the display monitor that is surrounded by the touch screen. Further, the expense of a large display screen is also eliminated. With touch system interaction on a matte/chroma-key backdrop the composite image provides the greater perception of interactivity with the background subject matter of the presentation. The present invention provides for the set-up and calibration of interactive touch system control integrated to matte/chroma-key image compositing systems. A number of terms used the art include the following:
Touch input device is an input device used in electronic systems that allows a user to interact by selecting or pointing to images on a display screen. Touch input devices include camera based, infrared, membrane and acoustic, resistive, surface capacitive, projected capacitive, surface acoustic wave, optical, bending wave, active digitizer, photo sensor in pixel, polymer waveguide, distributed light, strain gauge, multi-touch, dual-force touch, and laser-point activated touch.
Display screens include CRT, various flat screen displays such as plasma and LCD, and various projection systems. A display may also include blue screen/green-screen or chroma-key/matte systems. Matte/Chroma-key imaging compositing is a system that joins or mixes two images (usually a foreground image and a background image). “Blue screen” techniques in video environments and “green-screen” techniques in cinematographic environments are well known, wherein talents or models are filmed in a studio configured with respectively blue- or green-saturated surroundings, in order to generate a clip of foreground image frames. An alternative clip of background image frames is subsequently generated and a compositing process allows an image editor to seamlessly blend the foreground and background image frames by means of keying parts of the corresponding video signals, for instance the luminance or chrominance signal, which is known to those skilled in the art as chroma-keying. This technique is also referred to as color keying, color separation overlay, green-screen and blue screen. It is typically used for weather forecasts. The presenter appears to be standing in front of a large map, but in the studio it is actually a large blue or green background. Matte is an alternative process variant of data processing by means of using dedicated hardware for image compositing.
A touch system is an electronic system consisting of a touch input device and a display screen. It generally includes hardware and software control and processing means that mediate the electrical interaction between the touch input device and the display screen.
Calibration of a touch system is the act of aligning the active area of a touch input device with the active area of a display screen.
Chroma-key/matte backdrop is the background on which the images appear to be projected when viewed from a camera.
In one embodiment, the matte/chroma key video system comprises using the infrared (IR) from the touch device or from another IR source to saturate the matte/chroma key screen area and create the composite images. In this embodiment, the system uses the IR wavelength as the keying color such that a blue or green wall is not required. In the practice of this embodiment, any wall may be used. In this embodiment, an IR camera is used in conjunction with a regular camera. The fiducials are placed on the wall such as lightly painting. The IR band is calibrated to include reflections of any selected color wavelengths.